Perils of digital intimacy. A classification framework for privacy, security, and safety risks on dating apps

Dating apps have become increasingly popular, even more so in the period of the COVID-19 pandemic. Users rely on the anticipated results and perceived usefulness of dating apps, sometimes for extended periods of time. To create successful products, designers of dating apps aim to create sociotechnical structures that are attractive, easily usable, and profitable, thus raising challenges for security and privacy. The design of an app shapes users' experience and cultivates the ground for new practices. Tinder is one of the dating apps that has stirred controversy around its gamified design, and around the technical flaws that impact privacy and security. In this case study, we rely on participative observation and secondary analysis of scientific and journalistic investigations to systematize the implications brought by Tinder's design, to highlight and to classify the types of documented privacy, security, and personal safety risks for dating app users.